


Quotation

by NyxEtoile



Series: Complicated [3]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, POV Alternating, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 07:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyxEtoile/pseuds/NyxEtoile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second multi-part story in the Complicated series.</p>
<p>A bomb threat pushes Sherlock and Joan to their limits as they try to deduce the bomber's identity and motive before people are hurt. In the chaos they are forced to face the growing attraction between them.</p>
<p>(I'm terrible at summaries, really. It's a failing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with and centers around the idea of a bomb/terrorist threat to New York City. I am aware that this is a sensitive topic. I promise that I have done my very best to treat it with the dignity and respect it deserves.

Joan Watson took a deep breath of October air. It was crisp and clean, tinged with the scent of dry leaves and woodsmoke. “I love the fall,” she murmured, half to herself.

Next to her, Sherlock made a noise she had no definition for. 

“What?” she snapped, good mood evaporating.

He huffed, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. “Such an insipid sentiment. Everyone loves the fall. Oh, the chill in the air. Oh, the changing seasons.” She schooled her features so she wouldn’t smile at the sing songy, high pitched American accent. “And then, two weeks later they’re whining about raking leaves and ice on the pavement and the cost of heating their house. People like the idea of fall. The reality of it has just the same problems as all the other seasons.”

They walked in silence a few steps. “You like fall,” she said finally.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You do. It lets you dig out all your colorful sweaters.” He gave her a death glare but she continued on merrily. “Finally, you can shove your boring polo shirts and tees to the back of the closet and bring out the plaid and fair isle. And the waistcoats! The waistcoats remerge, just in case anyone forgets you’re British.”

He hunched his shoulders. “I see mocking your preferred season was a grave miscalculation.”

“Can we decorate the brownstone for Halloween?” she asked with fake perkiness.

He didn’t dignify that with a response. But he still helped her with her coat when they got home, so she decided it was best to drop it. She sorted through the mail, bills, a circular, two of Sherlock’s magazines and some political flyers. She put his magazines on the table in the lock room, next to his arm. She paused and looked at the rack. “Manufacture date cross referenced by. . . difficulty?”

He didn’t glance. “Right as always.” It had become a game between them, arranging and rearranging the locks to make the other guess the method. She took the bills up to her room, contemplating her next arrangement.

***

She could hear his phone buzzing on the desk. After three missed calls she brought it up to him on the roof. “Are you avoiding Captain Gregson’s calls?”

He didn’t look up from the notes he was taking. “I thought you wanted a break from cases after the one we just wrapped.”

The case they’d just finished had been. . . difficult. A murder plus a child abduction. Neither of them had slept well for the three days it had taken to find the little girl. She had mentioned something about needing a vacation, but, “When has that ever stopped you?”

“Some people would be gratified to know that their wishes were finally being considered,” he informed his notes.

The phone in her hand started buzzing again. She sighed and shifted to hold it out to him. “The least you could do is answer and tell him you’re on a break.” He looked up at her, mouth turned down almost petulantly. “It would gratify me.”

He stood abruptly and took the phone from her. “That’s not how you use that word,” he informed her in a mumble, turning with the phone to his ear before she could complete her eye roll.

She wandered over to the bees and peered in at her little name sakes. She always had to fight the urge to baby talk to them when she was up there. Sometimes, when Sherlock wasn’t around, she lost the battle.

“Watson.”

She straightened and looked at him. She’d rarely heard that tone in his voice. He sounded thick, like he was talking around a lump in his throat. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We need to go to the precinct immediately.” He scooped up his notes and headed for the door. She had to hurry to keep up with him.

“Why, what’s happened?” She chased him down the stairs. “Sherlock.”

He stopped halfway down and turned back to her. She caught herself on the bannister so she wouldn’t run into him. “There’s been a bomb threat,” he said, spitting the words out like they tasted bad. “It was sent to a local TV station to be broadcast this evening. They sent a copy to the police ahead of time.”  She sagged back, still gripping the bannister. “God.”

“The message doesn’t say where the bomb will go off. If it is played there will be mass hysteria. Captain Gregson’s hope is that we will be able to deduce the location of the bomb before anyone is injured.”


	2. Chapter 2

The man in the video clip was careful. His face was hidden in shadow, the backdrop a plain white sheet, indistinguishable from any other stretch of white cloth. The message itself was four and a quarter minutes of the usual threatening blather, notable only for its banality. 

When it was over Captain Gregson turned and looked at Sherlock expectantly. “Well?”

Sherlock stared at the black screen a moment longer, before looking at the other man. “If you expect me to miraculously know the location of the bomb after one viewing I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint.”

“Holmes. This is supposed to go on the air in three hours.”

“Did he give any indication what would happen if it was not played at his specified time?”

Gregson shook his head slowly. “No. But we tend to not want to anger the man with his finger on the literal button. The mayor is leaning on us to do this by the book. Election year and all. Which means humoring him as long as it keeps people alive.”

“If this goes out there could be a riot,” Watson said quietly. “People will panic.”

“Indeed,” Sherlock agreed. “And with no means of fighting the threat, the city is very likely to turn on itself. It would become chaos very quickly.”

“I don’t have a lot of options,” Gregson said, voice tight.

In other circumstances Sherlock would have been concerned he had somehow angered the other man. This was not their normal circumstances, however, so he wrote the tone off to stress. “I’ll need a copy of the message. I don’t have much hope to learn anything from the visuals but there my be information in the message itself. Clues as to his intent. Motive. It will require multiple viewings and I prefer to do that in my own surroundings.”

“Of course,” the Captain agreed readily, holding out a USB drive. “Already copied it for you.” Watson held out a hand for it and Gregson placed it in her palm. “Whatever you need, Holmes, you got it. But remember the deal.”

“Of course,” Sherlock said, allowing a touch of affront to enter his voice. “The instant I have something you can work on we will contact you.”

“Good.” He paused a moment. “Thanks.”

***

After thirteen viewings of four and a quarter minutes of blather words began to lack meaning. Not just the words in the blather, but all words. Sherlock was staring at the lock rack, contemplating all connotations of the word “rack” and listening to Watson putter in the kitchen.

She had joined him for the first, second, fifth and tenth viewings but seemed to have a lower threshold for rhetoric. She’d excused herself to the kitchen to make supper, announcing they needed comfort food. He shuddered to think what was going to be put in front of him. Possibly the bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich she’d favored after her injury in the summer.

Now was not the time to be thinking of that, he told himself, now glaring at his locks. He could think of it in calm moments, between cases, when she was sitting in the red chair knitting, or sleeping in her room. Moments when his world was stable and all the puzzles were solved. He could not, absolutely could NOT, think of it when the city was at risk of a bombing and he had no idea where or when it would happen. No good would come of that.

Well, it wasn’t entirely true that he didn’t know when the bomb would come. The video spoke of “devil’s night” which a quick scan of the internet indicated could be a reference to Halloween, a scarce five days from now. It wasn’t concrete by any means but a mental timeline sometimes helped him focus. He had already accepted he wouldn’t have anything useful by the television deadline.

A plate was put in front of him, containing bacon and a fried egg in the middle of a piece of toast. Watson set a cup of tea next to it before settling with her plate on the other side of the table. He stared down at the food a moment. “I haven’t seen egg in a hole in ages.” He glanced up at her. “Did you pick up a British cookbook when I wasn’t looking?”

“I saw it on TV,” she muttered around a bite of bacon.

“Your insistence on health food is waived in times of national security?”

“If I admit that you’re going to call in bomb scares every time you’re craving deep dish and mozzarella sticks.” She sipped her tea as he cut into his toast, egg yolk running across the plate. “It’s not religious,” she said finally.

“No,” he agreed. “There’s no mention of god or a higher power or purpose. No threats to the non believers. No indication of any extremist religious views.”

“So then what- I mean, I associate terrorism attacks with religion.”

He glanced at her, chewing thoughtfully. He reminded himself she was a New Yorker, had been here when the towers fell. Not yet a doctor, so saved that particular trauma, of an overstaffed ER waiting for casualties that never came. But a student. Young and frightened and uncertain. “Understandable,” he conceded. “But inaccurate. Extremism comes in all shapes and sizes. All it takes is a belief that overrides sense. It can be a belief in god. Or anarchy. Liberty. Anything.”

Watson glanced at the computer. “What do you think he believes in?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Which is troubling. I’ve listened to this rant multiple times now and I haven’t the faintest idea what he wants. What his purpose is. He mentions something about ‘the five houses will fall’ which could be a hint as to his targets, or just the ramblings of a mad man.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means that as a manifesto it’s rather lacking. Other then that I can’t tell you.” They lapsed into silence while they ate. When his meal was gone and hers almost so he spoke again. “If this case is upsetting to you. If you feel you’d rather sit it out. Perhaps take a holiday. I would understand and support you completely.”

Her eyes narrowed over the rim of her tea mug. “Why would you suggest that?” she said after she’d swallowed.

 He knew what she was really asking. Did he really think she was upset and trying to be kind? Or was his protectiveness towards her bubbling to the surface and he wanted to get her out of harm’s way. The answer, if he was honest, was a bit of both. Possibly with a few other, ill defined emotions and reasons blended in. But he answered the question she had asked and not the one she should have. “You only listened to the message a fraction of the times I did and were visibly uncomfortable when you did. You barely said a few words at the station. It’s been thirteen months, Watson, I know when something is bothering you. The previous case was troubling to us both and this. . . is much larger then what we normally deal with. I simply wanted to offer an out I knew your pride wouldn’t allow you to ask for.”

Her fingers had tightened around her mug as her talked, knuckles going white. He didn’t think anything he’d said was that troubling, so he suspected she was doing it to keep her hand from twitching. Nerve damage could be a funny thing. What had started out as an almost constant involuntary twitch had turned into a nervous one, appearing only when she was tired or overly emotional. He had noticed it often enough that she had started to notice it, too, and take pains to prevent or hide it when provoked. “It does feel big,” she finally said. “But that’s not why I’m upset. Yes, the last case was bad and I would have liked to spend this week pulling out my winter wardrobe and buying candy for trick-or-treaters. But it is what it is.” She put the mug on the table and flattened her palms on the surface, watching her left hand. “I’m upset because something is bothering me about the video and I can’t figure out what it is.”

He shifted. “Bothering you how?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know. It’s not the message itself, like you said other then the bomb threat there’s not much to it. Something about the words themselves. I don’t know.”

He stood up. “Well, you’re never going to figure it out by avoiding it. Come here. Come listen to it. I’ll take the dishes.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last of the short chapters. They get a bit meatier from here on out. Juggling the POVs and the plot can be tricky sometimes.

Joan listened to the damned garbled, synthed, disguised voice over and over again. She ended up at the table, eyes closed, headphones in her ears, trying to focus on each word, ignoring the tone and everything else. She narrowed it down to one section around the two minute mark and played a forty second clip over and over again.

She actually shouted when she got it, startling Sherlock, who had been half dozing on the floor near her feet. She tugged the head phones off. “Forever is composed of nows,” she told him triumphantly.

He blinked at her a few times. “‘And this now is mine, to do with as I see fit,’” he finished, quoting from the video. “What of it?”

“The first part, ‘forever is composed of nows’. That’s a quote. It’s an Emily Dickinson quote, that’s where I’d heard it before.”

He processed that a moment. “So our extremist believes in hermitic, minimalist poets?”

“Sherlock.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Well, I’m sorry, Watson. I just don’t see the significance.”

“Isn’t it weird? In the middle of an anarchist manifesto about blowing up New York he quotes Emily Dickinson?” She deflated a little as his expression didn’t change. “I just wasted all this time, didn’t I?”

He stood, stretching. “No, I wouldn’t say wasted,” he said. “You deduced what was bothering you about the message. Just because it wasn’t a breakthrough doesn’t mean it wasn’t time well spent. You needed to get past the blockage so that you can focus on the real problem.”

“Mmm,” she muttered, neither agreeing or disagreeing. She knew he was being kind because she tended to be down on herself. Which only made the kindness sting a little more. “Okay,” she said on a rush of breath, trying to shake it off. “What have you been working on?”

“The houses will fall,” he said, gesturing to the wall. “I’ve been contemplating houses, physical and metaphorical, that one might wish to fall.”

She got up, stretching the kinks out of her back, and walked over to the wall to study his notes. Historical monuments. Residences of important people. She frowned. “Hufflepuff? Really, Sherlock?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and bounced on his feet. “I may have been getting a little punchy at the end,” he admitted to the floor.

“Uh-huh.” She touched a note. “What does this mean? Infrastructure?”

“Ah. That. It occurred to me that to bring the city to it’s knees one might take out certain pillars of infrastructure. Electricity, transportation, gas works. Even police and fire. Weaken enough of them and the city falls. Like a house of cards.”

She stared at the words a moment. “Do you think that’s it?”

“Hard to say. It’s the worst case scenario, in my opinion. I’m trying not to let that sway my thinking. However, I don’t know how much panic blowing up one of Donald Trump’s homes would cause.”

She turned and tilted her head to read his watch. “The news ran hours ago. We have nothing to tell Captain Gregson.”

Sherlock paced to the end of the room and back. “Considering the circumstances I am going to bend my rules and inform him of the possible solutions, rather then waiting till I have a firm theory. I don’t know what he can do with the information, but I’ll not have a disaster worsened by my silence.”

It was at that moment she realized that this was upsetting him, too. Sherlock loved New York, had adopted it as his own. She imagined overall it held more good memories then bad, especially compared to London. He doesn’t want the city wounded either. “Maybe just being more vigilant will make the difference,” she offered quietly.

Sherlock gave his jerky nod and picked up his phone. Joan looked back at the board, then his computer. “I think- If you don’t mind I think I’m going to go read a while in my room. Try to reboot my brain.”

“Capital idea,” he said, the kindness back in his voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

***

Joan couldn’t sleep.

It was very late and she had spent the last twenty minutes counting the stains and cracks on her ceiling. When she got to fifty she stopped, depressed. Maybe it was time to repaint.

Something wasn’t right. She knew it. It had taken her a very, very long time to start listening to her instincts again. Without Sherlock and his work she didn’t think she ever would have. She was certain the Dickinson quote meant something. It had to. 

She could be wrong. Sherlock was wrong sometimes. He chased the wrong lead, read the evidence incorrectly. It happened. But most of the time when it did he knew it before he found the mistake. He was never convinced that he was right even after being proven wrong.

Her instinct said she was right. She needed to listen to that voice and not the one that said everyone made mistakes.

She swung her legs out of bed, toes curling on the cold floorboards. She found a soft grey hoodie in her drawers and tugged it on before heading downstairs.

The antique clock on the mantle said it was four eighteen. Joan watched the second hand slowly sweep around the face. Doubt crept in again, ugly and mean in the back of her mind. She doesn’t do this. She doesn’t get up in the middle of a night because a thought is worrying at her like a bone. Sherlock was the insomniac. He was the one down here in the pre-dawn chill, turning on every light to help him stay awake.

She was not Sherlock.

She looked over at his lap top, still set up on the lock table. One more time. She’d watch the video one more time and then go to bed. Seeing it for the fifty first time won’t make a damn bit of difference. But she was already down here and maybe it would make her feel better.

She sat on the stool, pulled her hoodie close around her body and played the video.

Halfway through a turn of phrase caught her ear and she paused it, the beginning of a crazy idea forming in her head. Sherlock’s tablet was in the kitchen. She retrieved it silently and set it up next to the lap top. And she got to work.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock woke with the sun, eager to get back to work. He was immediately aware of someone moving about downstairs. His first thought, as always, was an intruder, an enemy come to call. But he discounted that before he’d finished pulling a sweater over his head. (Fair isle, just to see if Watson noticed.) The footsteps downstairs were very light and hard to hear, but he recognized the tread as his partner’s.

What concerned him then, was what she was doing up before him.

He walked down to the first floor as silently as possible. When he reached the doorway of the lock room he discovered he needn’t have bothered. She was standing in front of what had been a blank wall when he went to sleep. It was now covered with pieces of paper full of her neat handwriting. He stood and watched her survey her work, right hand tapping a pen against her lips, left hand tapping against her thigh. For an instant that truly concerned him, as if somehow he’d infected her with his energy and nerves. Then he realized it was just her scarred hand, twitching because of fatigue. “Watson?” he said, quietly.

 She turned and smiled at him. “Sherlock. Okay. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I was on to something with the Emily Dickinson quote. Only it’s not just that line. The whole speech is quotes. All of it.”

“Watson, have you been up all night?”

“Only since four. Come here, look.” She turned to point to a paper.

So this was what it was like for people who dealt with him. Sherlock had the sudden urge to write a great number of apology letters. “Watson, I-” He stopped, the full impact of her words hitting him. “The whole message is quotes from other sources?”

She looked back at him. “Yes. There’s Emily Dickinson. Walt Whitman. Song lyrics, novels. The line about being burdened with a glorious purpose is from a superhero movie. I think the thing about the houses falling is from Game of Thrones. There’s connecting phrases and tenses are changed here and there but the whole thing is a patchwork of other ideas. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense, why there’s no motive. It really is just a bunch of words together to fill space.”

He looked past her at the wall of words, coming closer to read some of the notes. He let out a long breath. One quote was an aberration. An unconscious reference or just a coincidence. A whole speech of them. . . “Remarkable,” he murmured and caught her grin out of the corner of his eye. He looked down at her. “You should get some sleep.”

Her face fell. “But you just got here. We need to figure out what this means. Who posts a bomb threat without using their own words?”

“We will figure it out. But right now you’re exhausted and feeling the euphoria of sleep deprivation. You need to rest or you’ll be of no use to me.”

She brushed him off. “I’m fine. Really. I used to do this all the time when I was a surgeon. A cup of coffee and a change of clothes and I’ll be -”

He could have used any number of arguments to dissuade her. She wasn’t a surgeon anymore. She was the one who always nagged him about sleeping. Their work was very much hurry up and wait and the first time they had to wait she would almost certainly fall asleep. What he did was reach out and grasp her left wrist, marveling as always at how fragile the bones in it felt against his palm, and drew her hand up to eye level. Together they watched her fingers twitch in time to the pulse he could feel under his fingers.

Her mouth turned down, into what would have been a pout on any other woman. He saw the instant she gave in. “If you figure it out you have to come wake me,” she said.

“You need a minimum of two hours sleep,” he told her. She opened her mouth to protest and he spoke over her. “After those two hours, as soon as I have something I will wake you. Now. Go upstairs before I make you some of the tea with the drowsy bear on the box.”

That, at least, got a touch of a smile before she handed him her pen and went upstairs. He listened to her climb the steps and shut her door. There was utter silence after that, meaning she’d collapsed straight into bed. He nodded to himself and turned to her work on the wall.

Her notes weren’t arranged the way he’d have done it, which was both frustrating and gratifying. It would make his work a little slower, but it meant that while she was learning his methods she was applying them in her own way. With deduction it was the end result that was important, not how one got there. He took one of the notes down and rearranged it. Didn’t mean his way wasn’t better.

***

Two hours and two minutes later (he’d had to wait for the tea kettle to finish) he woke Watson with a tea tray on her beside table. She blinked at him blearily, still in her worn flannel pants and grey sweatshirt. “Sherlock?”

“Tea, toast and a banana,” he announced, striding to her closet. “Eat up Watson, we’re going for a walk.”

She groaned and he heard rustling as she rolled over. “I have regrets about my all nighter,” she admitted into her pillow.

Perhaps he should have given her another hour. But he’d promised two, so two is what he’d provided. “It isn’t easy being a deductive genius,” was all he said.

There was a clink of porcelain and her next words were muffled from food. “What did you figure out?” she asked.

He flicked through her wardrobe and came out with a royal blue and black skirt, which he tossed to her bed. “It isn’t what I figured out but what I feel cannot be figured out.” 

“What?” she asked after swallowing.

“Your discovery last night was the key, but I’d been wondering since our conversation regarding extremists what, exactly, our bomber wanted. Terrorists want something. To make a statement. What good is making a statement with no content. So, I had to consider the possibility that this isn’t a terrorist.” He added leggings to the skirt and pulled out a grey blouse.

“If it’s not a terrorist what is he doing bombing New York. Not that one, it has a tear I need to have fixed.”

He hmphed and went searching again. “Exactly. So, I thought, what do bombs do?”

“Explode?”

He finally decided on a cream camisole and black sweater combination. “They frighten us. They cause chaos.”

“But isn’t that a statement?” she asked. “Anarchists cause chaos to prove, I don’t know, that society is a lie.”

He turned back to see her finishing the last of her toast and sipping her tea. “Among other things, yes. But we know he isn’t an anarchist because if he was he’d be spouting anarchist rhetoric in his video and he’s not. So. If he’s not an anarchist and he’s not sending a message what is he doing?” She looked blank. “Come on, Watson! What happens when bombs go off?”

She blew out a breath and glanced around the room as if to help her focus. “There’s property damage, people die. Hospitals fill. Police and fire-” She stopped. “If it’s not about the bomb then it’s about the aftermath of the bomb. Distracting police and fire and the rest of the city so they can get away with something else. Like the robbery in the snow storm.”

He clapped his hands together. “Precisely. And if you wanted to cause the most gridlock and distract the most people where would you do it?”

She sipped her tea again. “Downtown. The financial district.”

“Which is where we are headed. Hurry up. And wear what passes for practical shoes, there may be a great deal of walking.”

***

Three hours later they had done a complete, thorough tour of the business district. Every few blocks they had stopped, debating the pros and cons of various potential bombing sites. Had anyone overheard them Sherlock was fairly certain he would have ended up having to call Captain Gregson to explain a few things to whomever had detained them. Fortunately, this was New York and they were largely ignored.

An hour in he had bought Watson an overpriced, too sweet coffee in an attempt to stop her constant yawning. It had taken half the cup but her mood and focus had improved. They now had a top ten list of potential sites he was prepared to share with Captain Gregson.

After, of course, she bought a hot dog from a man pushing a cart.  
 “Are you sure you don’t want one?” she asked again, using the tip of her finger to more uniformly distribute diced onions.

“I make it a point to never eat food purchased from something with wheels,” he informed her, not bothering to keep disgust out of his voice.

“You will never be a true New Yorker,” she said, taking a bite.  
 They started walking again, back up Broad Street towards the Stock Exchange. “I had no idea citizenship requirements now involved food born illness.”

“Okay, first of all, I’ve never gotten sick from a cart dog. And second, I’ve seen you eat food that’s been sitting out overnight so don’t-”

She was interrupted by an explosion. Without a thought Sherlock caught her arm and pressed her into the doorway of an investment firm they were passing. She stared up at him, body tense as people rushed past them. “Where-”

“In front of us. On a side street.” 

“Not Wall Street. Not the exchange.” 

He shook his head. “No. It wasn’t that far ahead.” He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd. “Or that loud.”

She nodded slowly and followed his gaze. Her hot dog had fallen from her hand, either with surprise at the bomb or when he’d grabbed her. It was now trampled beyond recognition. “We should go try to help.” 

He hissed air between his teeth. He’d known that was coming. “Watson.”

“Sherlock, we can help.” She looked up at him, eyes wide and earnest. “They’ll need medical help and you can examine the blast site. We can help.”

He grit his teeth. Right now, all he wanted was to go back in time and wait another hour before waking her. But no, then they might have been far closer to the blast. She was still looking at him, expectant. His mouth thinned, but he reached down and took her hand. “We’ll be going against the current. Stay with me,” he ordered, then pulled her out into the crowd.

The bomb had been at a commercial bank just off of Broad street. The explosion had taken out the front windows and part of the eastern wall. The building next to also showed structural damage. Police were cordoning off the area, trying to hold back the crowd. He lead Watson to the most confident looking uniform and together they explained that she was a doctor and he was a consulting detective. They sent her across the street where they were taking the wounded. As she walked away he watched her posture change, slipping into the one he only saw when she was stitching him up or insisting she put antiseptic on a wound. He imagined that was what Dr. Watson had looked like, once upon a time.

His explanation took longer. A phone call to Gregson got the Captain at the scene and a greater degree of information. While the bomb squad cleared the structure and the fire department looked for survivors and knocked down unstable rock Sherlock caught the Captain up on his theory.

“So you think this is a distraction for something else that’s going on?” the other man said, sounding skeptical.

“I know the method sounds drastic,” Sherlock conceded, scanning the street for a glimpse of Watson. “But we’ve been unable to uncover any other motive. This explosion simply further confirms my suspicions.”

Gregson looked over at the ruined building, the injured woman they were currently carrying out. “How?”

Sherlock paused a moment to phrase his response properly. “It could have been much worse.” Gregson looked at him sharply and he plowed on. “This is a commercial bank, no private customers. It’s done by appointment. The bomb went off at lunchtime, when there were likely the least amount of appointments and the most number of workers out of the building for lunch. I haven’t had a chance to examine the blast site, but from preliminary observation the bomb itself was set near the front of the building, near the foundation. Now, that could be a product of opportunity, the bomber placed the bomb where it was most convenient. But if you’re going to be that lackidasical with placement I would expect you to have a bomb that can flatten a building, not just part of it. Weak bombs need proper placement for maximum damage.” 

“Maybe he’s just bad at this,” Gregson suggested in a tone that indicated he didn’t believe it.

“Or maybe, he wanted a big bang with the least amount of casualties.” He scanned the crowd. “A bomber with a conscience.” 

One of the firemen gave Gregson a thumbs up. “We can go in now,” he told Sherlock.

It stank of soot and wet carpet and burnt cloth. Sherlock tucked the top of his scarf over his nose and mouth and went to work.

It was not the bloodiest crime scene he’d ever been to, or the largest. But still, it was difficult. Among the rubble he found traces of accelerant and detonator mingled with personal affects of the victims. A woman’s high heel, stained with blood and ash hit him especially hard. He retrieved a set of keys with a butterfly key chain and a family picture in a plastic sleeve and handed it off to one of the officers to make sure it got to the proper person.

This is why he preferred murder. He could sympathize with the victim. Could fight for justice for them. But he didn’t have to THINK about them. He didn’t know who the high heeled woman was, but his mind was offering all manner of theories. Who she loved. What plans she’d had for the weekend. Who was waiting for her at home. Why had she chosen those shoes to wear today. It was distracting. He needed to focus on the crime, but the people were talking to him as well. 

It made his perusal take longer, but he tried to tell himself it grounded him as well. Living victims meant a modicum of decorum would be in order. Perhaps humanizing it all would help with that. Watson usually did it for him, but she was across the street in her element and likely not in the mood to remind him what social skills were.

When he had wrung the last bit of information out of the scene he went back out onto the street, dismayed to note how low in the sky the sun was. Gregson met him at the police line. “Looks like you were right about lunch hour. There were only two appointments and about a third of the employees were out of the building. Still leaves us with four confirmed deaths and over twenty casualties. We got emergency people from all over the city here, but I haven’t heard anything about another crime, though.” Sherlock glanced over at the triage area, now a sea of people and ambulances. “Listen, Holmes,” Gregson continued. “This isn’t my case. I’ve vouched for you as much as I can, but the mayor is taking this real seriously. The election is in less then two weeks and he needs to save some face. I’ll pass along anything I can, but you aren’t going to be able to pull the kind of shit you normally do.”

Well, he supposed it was only a manner of time before he came up against a crime above his pay grade, so to speak. “Are you asking me to halt my investigations?” He wasn’t going to, but it was important to know how much subterfuge was needed.

“No. Nothing like that. Just. . . I don’t want phone calls about you, all right?”

Sherlock nodded jerkily, still studying the triage. “Concern noted. I will endeavor to color inside the lines as much as possible. Since the majority of my investigation will likely be done inside the walls of my home it shouldn’t be an issue.”

Gregson let out a breath. “Thanks.” He paused. “Go get her. Last I saw she wasn’t looking too good.”

Sherlock was too tired to pretend he didn’t know who or what the Captain was talking about. He just nodded again and made his way over to the ambulances.

He found Watson hunkered against the wall of a building, back pressed to the brick, knees bent in a crouch. She had the back of a hand pressed to her forehead, the other limp on her knee. She had lost her coat and her sweater and camisole were smudged red and grey. He could see dry, chapped spots on her hands, evidence of frequent washings in the cold air. He had never seen her look so exhausted. 

She seemed to know he was coming without looking up. “Do you know-?”

“Four dead,” he said quietly, stopping at her side. “Twenty odd injuries.”

She nodded, letting her hand drop from her head. “I didn’t keep track.”

“It’s time to go home, Watson.”

She looked up at him. “There are more-”

He gave a little shake of his head. “Watson. It’s time to go. You’ve done what you could. More then most. You need food and rest and. . . home.”

She looked up at him another long moment and he realized he rarely referred to the brownstone as her home. Not out loud, at least. He was mulling the implications of that when she nodded and started to stand. He helped her with a gentle hand on her elbow and together they walked down the street to find a cab.

The ride home was silent and somber. Sherlock realized they were both coated in a fine layer of dust and soot. He imagined her shirt was headed for the bin, but he held out hope for her skirt. He liked that skirt, it was the one she was wearing when he had asked her to stay on with him as a partner. Awkward as the conversation had been he still considered it a pleasant memory. She had said yes, after all.

He unwound his scarf and shrugged out of his coat before helping Watson with hers. When he turned back to her he saw her face was crumpled, as if she was about to cry.

That’s when the day hit him. The smells and the feel of crumbling stone. Orphaned shoes and lives changed. And a criminal he didn’t understand and so couldn’t predict. This was the kind of day he would have sought the heroin, even in the days before The Woman. He would have lost himself in oblivion, let the drug dull his senses, soothe his mind, allow him to cope with the frustration and helplessness.  
 That was no longer an option. He was done with drugs, fought every temptation that came to him. The feigned OD months ago had been too close. Going through the motions, bringing up the sense memories. It had tempted him and strengthened his resolve in almost equal measures. Much as he might like to lose himself in the needle and the burn he could not.

So he sought something else he shouldn’t want. He lifted his hands, cupped Watson’s face and kissed her.

 She tasted of that awful coffee he’d bought her hours ago and the cherry lip balm she used. She smelled of smoke and disinfectant and faintly of orange blossoms. He skin was soft and her hair slippery and silken under his fingers. He was cataloging her, not with clinical detachment, but pure delight. Delight in being this close to her, in touching her. In finding a flicker of peace before she rightly shoved him away and he had to manage the consequences.

Her hands came up and flattened on his chest. There it was. Now she would shove him away. He wondered if she would slap him or just head upstairs. He wondered if this was what would drive her away permanently.

But instead of pushing she clutched at him. Her hands gathered up fistfuls of waistcoat and shirt and she pulled him closer, kissing him back. He loosened the hold he had on his self control, backing her towards the wall, pressing her into the wood when they reached it. He deepened the kiss, sweeping her mouth with his tongue, exploring her. He felt her legs weaken and he guided them both to the floor, her half crouched, half sitting, hip pressed to the stairs, him kneeling, looming over her.

 Any other woman he would be tugging her blouse off by now, running a hand up her leg. But this wasn’t anyone else, it was Watson. And as much as he was enjoying the kiss, that wasn’t where he wanted this to go. So he slowly lifted his mouth, rested his head against hers and waited to see what would happen.


	5. Chapter 5

Joan sat on the floor of their foyer and waited for the world to start making sense again. It had been one of the worst days of her life. It had been so good to be home and safe. She’d been about to tell Sherlock to order pizza while she showered. She’d needed some time to decompress, maybe cry in private to let the stress out.

 And then he’d kissed her. And she’d kissed him back.

Now he had his mouth pressed to her forehead, hands still cupping her face. He liked holding faces, touching them. She’d noticed it when they’d found The Bitch, when she was pretending to be broken and fragile. She’d thought at the time it was because he couldn’t believe it was really her, that she was alive. But she’d noticed when she was injured, when she was still doped up on pain killers and he thought she was asleep, he would touch her face. He’d cupped her cheek when he first found her at the crime scene, too, his face stark with relief.

“Watson,” he said against her skin, words slightly muffled. “I didn’t-”

“If you tell me you didn’t mean to, or it was an accident, or apologize in any way I will punch you in the throat,” she said calmly, feeling her head clear. His mouth tightened into a thin line but he didn’t finish his thought. She took a deep breath. For the first time in what felt like a long time she felt confident. The world made sense again, even if it was a different kind sense that it had been a few hours ago. “I’m going to talk now,” she told him. “You’re going to listen and not say anything until I’m done, okay?” A jerky nod.

She took a breath, forcing her thoughts into logical lines. Or at least into coherent sentences. “We’re complicated,” she started. That got another jerky nod in agreement. “I know you think of your mind as an attic. Your genius loci. I think I think of mine as the storage area at my old high school. A rabbit warren of nooks and crannies and closets that goes on forever. All neatly labeled. And I can put people into the appropriate closet. Family. Lovers. Good friends. Acquaintances. Clients. People I’ve lost touch with that I miss. People I’ve lost touch with that I don’t miss.” That got a twitch of his lips that might have been a smile. “You don’t fit in any of those closets,” she said, letting some of her frustration rise. “So I had to make one just for you. It says Sherlock on it in crooked, scrawling letters and the hinges don’t match and it’s probably a mess inside because you’re you.” Another twitching smile and this time she let herself smile, too. “I feel like if I had to label the closet with anything other then your name I would run out of room. Because we’re complicated.

“I know you want to talk about this. What just happened. You want to sort it out and analyze it and uncomplicate it until it makes sense. That’s what you and I do with things we don’t understand. But I think if we do that then. . . then we’ll kill it. Or change it into something it’s not just so we can label it. It’s the observer effect.” That got her a little noise of approval for the science reference. “So, I think what I’m saying is. . . let’s not talk about this. Let’s leave it be what it is and see what grows. And we’ll only analyze it if it becomes unhealthy or something we don’t want.” Privately, she was pretty sure it was already unhealthy. There was a codependency to their relationship that most therapists would tell her to run away from. But she also thought that it was that codependency that kept them both sane, so it was a bit of a catch-22. She didn’t say any of that though. “Okay. You can talk now.”

He shifted away a little so he could speak clearly. “You’re right,” he said, quietly. “There are things in this world that no amount of analysis or discussion will improve. Our bond is almost certainly one of them. I will endeavor not to over analyze it in my own mind and let. . . nature take it’s course for lack of better phrasing. But you must tell me when I have crossed a boundary or blundered ahead beyond your comfort level. I am not good with relationships.” She couldn’t stop the little noise she made. “I know, that information shocks you.” He hesitated. “I fear ending this with my own fumbling.”

She smiled a little. He was always so ready to take all the blame. “I’ve known you over a year, Sherlock. I know how you are and I know how to push you back when you’ve gone too far. We’ll manage.” She touched his chest lightly, then the pulse in his throat, rapidly fluttering against her finger tips. She idly counted the pulses. “For starters, a little warning before pinning me to the wall and kissing me might be nice.”

He made a noise that was almost a groan. It rumbled right through her, making her shiver. “Nonsense, Watson,” he said, voice low. He tilted her face up as he leaned in closer. “Warning takes all the fun out of it.” 

His mouth covered hers again. Most of the desperation was gone but the intensity was still there, cranked even higher if that was possible. Maybe because now he knew it was allowed, welcomed. Joan didn’t consider herself an innocent. But Sherlock kissing her was a new experience. It was speaking without words in a language she’d forgotten she knew.

After a long moment he lifted his head and pressed a kiss to her forehead before shifting back and helping her to her feet. “I will be a gentleman for once and give you the shower first without debate.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “And maybe order dinner?”

He nodded and she went upstairs without another word.

***

Two showers, take out from Mings and a large pot of green tea later Joan felt something resembling normal. She was stretched out on the living room floor, knees bent, trying to stretch out the kinks in her back, sore and knotted up from hunching over gurneys all afternoon. “So what did you learn at the bomb site?” she finally asked. Conversation over dinner had been stilted and carefully avoided the day’s events. If she didn’t bring them up she didn’t think Sherlock ever would.

There was definitely relief in his voice when he responded. “A great deal. None of which I know how to put together into a conclusion.”

She covered her eyes with a forearm, giving up on the back stretches and enjoying just laying there. “Hit me with it.”

“The bomb was amateurish in a way that is insulting to amateurs. A modified fertilizer bomb. One could buy the components at any of a number of hardware stores. It appears to have been housed in a black canvas bag. High end. Possibly some sort of satchel or messenger bag.”

“I talked to some of the wounded. The ones who were calmest,” she added. “No one remembered anything out of the ordinary. Said it looked like the explosion had come from a storage closet no one really went into. It was near the bathrooms. Someone could have had a meeting, ducked into the restrooms and dropped it off without being noticed. Especially if it was in a bag that wouldn’t look out of place on a businessman.”

There was a pause. “I should have known you would find time to aid the investigation even while running a disaster triage.”

She snorted, eyes still covered. “I didn’t really run it. Most of the injuries I saw were minor and those that weren’t the ambulances took pretty quick. And no one died after I saw them. I’m calling it a win. An exhausting, miserable win.”

Sherlock was silent. She couldn’t even hear him fidgeting, which wasn’t like him. She was about to lower her arm and look at him when he finally spoke. “I am beginning to doubt our odds of solving this before another event.” She was quiet, letting him talk. “I use deduction. But deduction is a science. It requires logic. There is no logic to this, at least not that I can find. If there’s no logic then-”

A week ago - hell a day ago - she would have had no idea what to do or say. Sherlock and doubt usually didn’t meet. But what had happened in the foyer a couple hours ago had changed the rules. Just because they weren’t going to talk about it didn’t mean they were going to ignore it entirely. 

 She stretched an arm up over her head and found his foot resting on the floor. She touched him, then curled her hand lightly around his ankle. “I don’t believe people can be truly random,” she told him. “Even when they try to be there’s something that will give them away. We are a sum of our experiences. This guy has a logic to him. We just haven’t seen it yet. When we do we’re going to nail his ass to the wall.”

“You’re so certain of that?” he asked, sounding almost amused.

“With every bit of me. The criminal hasn’t been born that can stand against the both of us.”

There was another long stretch of silence. Then he reached down and touched her wrist lightly with his fingers. “Thank you, Joan.” 

That startled her into dropping her arms and half turning on the floor to look at him in shock. He looked equally disturbed, mouth working like her name had tasted bad. She snorted a little and he chuckled and just like that they were both laughing. The hard, body hunching kind of laughter that left you sore and winded.

She rubbed a tear from the corner of her eye, blowing out a breath. “Wow,” she said when they’d calmed. “That was weird.”

“It just seemed-”

“Don’t ever call me that again.”

He waved a hand. “God, no. Believe me. I just thought. . . Well, it occurred to me that calling you by your last name might no longer be appropriate.”

She laughed again. “It’s probably not. But it’s what you call me. I’m not Watson to anyone else.” She tilted her head. “Consider it an adorable nickname. I could think of one for you.” He gave her a dark look that she knew meant everything was fine. So she used the arm of the couch to pull herself to her feet and stretch. “Well, now that you’ve totally ruined that moment, I’m going to sleep. Do not wake me unless something else explodes, I mean that literally.”  

He nodded. “You have my word. Goodnight, Watson.” 

She paused and moment, wanting to touch him but not wanting it to be an overture for anything else. Complicated was an understatement. As if he could read her mind he lifted a hand, just a bend of the elbow to get his hand at head height so she wouldn’t have to reach for it. She took his fingers and squeezed gently before releasing him to go to bed.

***

Joan woke the next morning to sunlight creeping across her bed and the sounds of the city outside her window. Not just morning, but late morning. Sherlock hadn’t come in with any theories or to tell her there was another bomb. She had a sudden panic that he’d thought of something and left without her. She went very still and listened to the sounds of the house until she could pick our the dull roar of the televisions. TVs during a case meant he was stuck. She should go and talk to him, get food in them both and start examining all the angles.

Instead she rolled onto her back, gazed at her pock marked ceiling and thought about the previous day. She started with the bomb and triage work. She didn’t think she’d missed anything important the injured people had told her. She didn’t know anything about explosives, so she might be missing something due to ignorance. Still, victims of disaster usually weren’t the best sources of information. It was unlikely they’d seen anything she could use.

With that out of the way she turned her thoughts to coming home. The foyer. The kiss. Kisses, she corrected herself. It would be easy to pass them off as a reaction to the day. A way to deal with the awful things they’d seen and dealt with. It was common to reach out to another person when faced with tragedy. But that was the easy answer and with her and Sherlock nothing was ever the easy answer. That kiss had been building up between them for a long time. Since the beginning, maybe. For the last few months certainly. 

She’d meant what she said to him. They were complicated. They didn’t fit in easy boxes or labels. They never would. But this thing between them. The friendship and trust and dependency and the passion. That was real. And big and scary and overwhelming. But it was theirs. And she was really looking forward to seeing what became of it.

She realized at some point she’d pressed a hand to her heart and was idly counting the beats, steady and sure under her palm. She smiled, thinking of him calling her Joan and how ridiculous it had sounded. She tucked that moment in a closet labeled Good Memories, to be brought out the next time she was pissed at him, or frustrated, or he threw a tennis ball at her.

With that sorted, and Joan feeling lighter then she had in a long time, she got out of bed and got dressed.


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock stared blankly at the TVs he had on, listening to Watson perform her morning routine. Imagining her choosing clothes and making tea was a pleasant break from the paths his mind had been on all night.

She made her way up to him eventually and he could smell Darjeeling as she came in the room, gingerly stepping over stacks of video cassettes as she came over to hand him his mug. She surveyed the cassettes with dismay. “Okay, but if you start hoarding your fingernail clippings we’re going to need to have a talk.”

He sipped his tea. “These are only two weeks old.”

She shook her head and stood at his side, gaze flicking from one TV to the next. She would never be able to watch them all as he did. It wasn’t how her mind worked. His was like a mouse in a cage, jumping from place to place, running along the wheel with frantic energy. Watson’s was sleek and graceful, like a cat. Observing and pouncing on the proper answer.

 He drank more tea in an effort to focus on the case and not colorful animal imagery. “Were you up all night?” she asked, sounding dismayed.

“According to timestamps on the videos I was watching at the time I dozed off between 3:16 and 4:38.”

She looked over at him. “What have you found?”

“Shortly after you went to bed I came here to watch television in an effort to clear my head. Or perhaps fill it with so much white noise something useful could come to the surface. While doing so, I caught a bit of the evening news, talking about yesterday’s bombing.” He used his remote to silence three of the TVs and rewound the fourth so she could hear it.

 A portly man in a bespoke suit and cashmere coat was talking into several microphones. “-all shaken by this awful event-” 

“That is Gerald Kline. He’s running for mayor against the incumbent, Walter Blye.”

“Yes, he’s killed several trees worth of flyers telling me so. Why am I watching his soundbite?”

“Listen.”

“-city has been hurt before. But a wounded deer leaps the highest and I know-”

He paused the tape and looked at her. Her eyes were wide as she turned from the television screen to look at him. “I’ve heard that. The wounded deer. Or read it. Where have I-”

“It’s Emily Dickinson, again,” he confirmed quietly. “It struck me, too. But as I said the other night, one quote means nothing. So I dug out recent tapes to find other examples of Mr. Kline speaking. And I noticed a curious pattern. His speeches are devoid of any noticeable quotation, Dickinson or otherwise. But his soundbites. His off the cuff remarks. They drip with references.”

“So his speech writers don’t quote,” Watson said slowly. “But he does. Sherlock, you don’t think-”

“I think,” he said precisely. “That we need to have what could be a very awkward conversation with Captain Gregson. And from there. . . well, we’ll see.”

***

It was, in fact, an extremely awkward conversation with the good captain. Sherlock was almost certain that if Watson hadn’t been there Gregson would have thrown him directly out of his office. But she was there, the cool, calm lake to his ever more chaotic hurricane. Once he told Gregson the basics, that a very wealthy and influential mayoral candidate was most likely a mad bomber, Watson took over with the details. The exceedingly circumstantial evidence. He wasn’t sure what it was; her demeanor, the authority she managed to put in the words or the fact it was her and not him saying, but in the end Gregson agreed to look into it.

It had lead to them walking into Mr. Kline’s campaign headquarters on a bright, crisp Halloween morning. Gregson was still muttering under his breath, but the evidence had stacked up quite damningly. Kline almost certainly had a team of lawyers that would try to get him out of it. But Sherlock was going to do his damnedest to prevent them from succeeding.

Gregson’s badge got them into Kline’s office. The headquarters was a prewar building, somewhat reminiscent of the brownstone. The large first floor rooms were divided by half walls, allowing interns a modicum of privacy. Kline’s office was on the second floor, in what had likely been a parlor in the house’s infancy. The man’s face was impossible to read as they stepped inside. “I don’t believe you have an appointment,” was all he said when introductions were completed.

“No, sir. I’m afraid not,” rumbled Gregson.

“Much as I admire the proud members of the New York police force, I’m afraid I’m on my way out the door. Brief trip upstate. Family business, you understand, so-” He half stood as if he was going to usher them out personally. Sherlock decided to go straight to the heart of the matter.

“We’re here to discuss the recent bombing. And the bomb threat that was sent to the local news the day before it.”

Kline froze, a reaction Sherlock would not have expected from an innocent man. He slowly sank back into his chair. “What of it?” he said carefully, face a mask of polite interest.

“We have reason to believe you were involved,” Gregson said. “You might not know it, but Mr. Holmes and Ms. Watson work as consulting detectives for the NYPD. They’ve been working on determining the bomber’s identity since we received the tape.”

Kline gave a little bark of laughter. “And you think it’s me?”

“At this point I’m almost certain of it,” Sherlock said. “Though, I admit, the original leap was shaky at best. You really should learn to have an original thought, Mr. Kline. Your incessant need to quote tipped your hand.”

“I’m also a fan of Dickinson,” Watson said cooly, tone not giving away a hint of sarcasm. 

Kline was starting to sweat, physiological reactions were so difficult to contain. His face and voice still managed to stay calm. “If you think a few quotes-”

“As I said, the evidence only started on shaky ground. Once I brought my suspicions to the captain here, well, far more fell into place.”

“Your bank records, for one,” Gregson said. 

“You hid it well but looking at the whole picture we were able to find purchases covering all the pieces of the bomb,” Watson said. “Even some purchased through your campaign.”

“And then there was the appointment at the bank three days ago. The bank that blew up, I mean,” Sherlock added.

“I didn’t have any-”

“Not you. Your nephew.” Kline paled noticeably and Sherlock pressed on. “He’s one of your campaign aides, is he not? What excuse did you give him for the appointment? Did he know the bag you had him carry and leave behind was literally a ticking time bomb? Did you tell him it was a payoff? Hide one crime for another in the hopes he would never talk?”

Kline was looking from one of them to the other as if they’d all gone mad. “What possible motive would I have for all of this? Bombing my own city? The city I hope to be mayor of?”

“That’s exactly it,” Watson said, in the patient tone she sometimes used on Sherlock when he was being deliberately obstinate. It was rather amusing to see it aimed at someone else. “You want to be mayor. But you’ve been behind in the polls the whole race. You needed something to boost you up in the eyes of the people. After the towers fell Mayor Guliani’s approval rating skyrocketed. In times of crisis people look for a leader, a hero. Someone with a level head. And if fate wasn’t going to supply a crisis. . .”

“You’d just make one of your own,” Sherlock finished for her.

“Mr. Kline, we’d like you to come with us,” Gregson said quietly, taking a step forward.

Kline moved, quicker then he’d done anything else the entire time they had been there. He pulled a gun out from his desk. Without thinking Sherlock grabbed Watson and yanked her behind him. He felt her fingers grip the back of his coat. From the corner of his eye he saw both Gregson and Bell had pulled their weapons. But it was unnecessary. Rather then aim the gun at any of them Kline pointed it at his own chin and pulled the trigger. 

Sherlock flinched and he felt Watson’s hand spasm against his back. She moved around him as if to run and aid Kline but Sherlock held her back, shaking his head. “I don’t think even you can fix that,” he said quietly.

She looked stricken, eyes wide. Around them, Gregson and Bell were calling the suicide in. Kline’s aides were swarming the office to see what had happened. But all Sherlock was aware of was Watson. Her eyes darted towards the blood spatter on the back wall, then back to Sherlock’s face. He watched her calm, find her center. When she gave him a little nod he gently steered her out of the room. 

They lingered in the hall while emergency personnel, police and campaign workers ran around, desperately looking for something to do. The EMTs brought the body out. Sherlock watched it go past, pensive.

“What is it?” Watson asked softly.

“What is what?”

“You have that look.”

He glanced down at her. “Look?”

She sighed. “The ‘mystery is solved but something doesn’t quite add up and so I’m brooding’ look.”

Well, if there was anyone on earth who had a mental catalog of his facial expressions it was her. “It’s just odd, isn’t it? He wanted to be a hero. To get the public on his side. But wouldn’t it just as likely turn the people to Bly, to the current mayor? He’d be up on the podium, spouting platitudes.” He looked down the long flight of stairs. “Unless.” He started down them at full speed.

“Unless what?” Watson called behind him.

“He was on his way out of town. Upstate for family business. Had we not interrupted he would be in a car on his way to the airport right now.” He hit the main floor and glanced about, before weaving through the desks towards the back of the house.

The house’s kitchen was being used as a break room. Sherlock opened two storage closets before finding stairs leading down. “He wasn’t trying to be a hero, Watson,” he said, running down the steps to the basement. There, in the corner, haphazardly hidden with a tarp, lay a cobbled together bomb attached to a digital timer, counting down. “He wanted to play the victim.”

Watson gripped his arm. “Oh, God, Sherlock. We have to tell Gregson. Evacuate.”

He stepped closer. “Timer is under two minutes, we may get this building emptied but not the ones nearby. This is a larger bomb then the one at the bank. He learned from his mistakes.” He flexed his hands, studying the structure of the bomb. “Run, Watson.”

She turned and took three steps before realizing he wasn’t following. She stopped and turned back to him and he sighed under his breath. “You’re coming with me,” she said, not making it a question. As if that would stop him from arguing.

“I can disarm it,” he said, not looking at her. “It’s straight forward. Bombs are simple devices-”

“Then why don’t-”

“I can disarm it if I can concentrate,” he said, voice raised. “I will not - cannot- concentrate if you are in danger.” He spared a glance at her, gauging her reaction.

 Her eyes were wide. He braced himself for an argument. Or worse, a tearful goodbye. Instead, her eyes narrowed, glanced at the timer on the bomb. And then she turned and ran up the stairs.

 He let out a breath and moved to the bomb, crouching. Bombs were simple. Accelerant, timer, trigger. He could do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about the cliffhanger. I'll get the next chapter up ASAP.


	7. Chapter 7

Joan counted as she ran.

One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand.

There was 1:24 on the timer when she started running. Eighty four seconds. If she got to eighty five with no explosion then he’d done it.

She was on nine when she reached Gregson, gripping his arm. “Bomb. In the basement. Set to blow in one minute.”

He reacted immediately. “All right. Everybody out. Let’s move.”

She fled with the crowd.

Nineteen-one-thousand. Twenty-one-thousand.

They set up an impromptu perimeter at the end of the block, forcing the crowd to back up. Joan stood even father back, up a slight incline so she could watch the building over the heads of the crowd. Cops ran around, trying to keep the crowd at bay and encourage people to disperse.

Thirty-five-one-thousand. Thirty-six-one-thousand. Thirty seven-

“Can he really defuse a bomb?” Captain Gregson asked, coming up to her. “I called bomb squad but no way they’re getting here in time.”

She didn’t take he eyes off the door of the building. “He’s done mock ups at the brownstone,” she said. “Never with live explosives, I have a limit.”

“Guys train for years to defuse bombs,” he said carefully.

Joan watched the building.

Sixty-three-one-thousand. Sixty-four-one-thousand.

The front door opened and Sherlock stepped out onto the porch, looking weary. A cheer rose from the gathered emergency personnel.

Joan smiled a little. “I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

Gregson went to go talk to him, leaving her by herself, watching Sherlock make his way to her.

 She thought about running to meet him. Throwing herself in his arms and kissing him. Or shoving him so hard he fell on his careless, reckless ass. But they’re not ones for grand, public gestures. And it’s not her place to announce their new relationship rules to Gregson and Bell and anyone else who was watching. Still, it was very tempting to be a hysterical woman, just this once.

His shouldered were hunched and he seemed to have a hard time looking at her. He, apparently, expected the shoving. He reached her eventually and just stood before her, not saying anything, braced for a blow.

_I must love him_ , she thought suddenly, not even surprised at the revelation. _He wouldn’t exasperate me this much if I didn’t._

She reached out and took his hand in both of hers, slowly lifting it. She brought it to her mouth, brushing a kiss against his knuckles before resting it on her breastbone, right above her heart beat. “Don’t ever do that again,” she said softly.

His throat worked. “Watson, I-”

“ _I mean it._ ” She put every ounce of fear and worry and panic she’d felt in the last few seconds into those three words. “That is the last time you tell me to run and leave you behind.” His fingers flexed against hers, but he didn’t respond.

“This thing between us. The complicated. It’s strange and a little scary. But I want it. I want to see what we’ll become. Even if it’s never more then this. Even if it fizzles out in a year. Whatever happens I want to know. But it needs both of us to get there. So from here on out whatever happens we do it together. If I’m running then you’re running with me. If you’re standing and fighting then I’m right there next to you. That’s the only way this is going to work.”

He stared down at her, barely breathing. His hand was still fluttering against hers, like a bird in a snare. The silence stretched and she felt a sense of having lost an important battle. She started to let his hand go when his fingers clenched around hers. “I promise,” he said, voice rough, barely over a whisper. “I would- would very much like to see what we become, as well.”

She smiled, tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. Happy tears, for once. “Good,” she whispered.

He bent close and rested his forehead on hers. She took a deep breath of the wild mix of scents that was Sherlock. To anyone watching it was as public a declaration as any grand gesture would have been. Joan closed her eyes and soaked in the feeling of touching him. “Can we go home, now?”

***

Joan insisted they stop at the bodega on they way back to the brownstone so they could stock up on candy for the trick-or-treaters. Then she discovered Sherlock had a Tootsie-Pop “problem” and ran out for more. They spent the evening handing out candy and taking down all remnants of the case.

When the trick-or-treaters had tapered off and all the papers was pulled off the walls Sherlock went digging in one of his many closets and came back with a board game. They then proceeded to have the longest game of checkers in history.

“We can never play RISK,” she muttered somewhere around one in the morning, when they were down to five checkers on the board just dancing around each other, waiting for a mistake.

“Indeed,” he said, glaring at the board. “Though I am starting to think a chessboard would be a welcome addition to the house. Something to help stave off boredom between cases.”

“You’ll probably have to re-teach me,” she said, nudging one her pieces to a new spot. “It’s been a long time since I played.”

He glanced up at her. “I’m happy to teach you anything you’d like to learn, Watson.

***

Election day they kept all the TVs off and left the paper in the breezeway. Joan carefully rearranged the locks - by color, he was never going to figure that out - and Sherlock fluttered from project to project. 

He was typing out some of his bee notes when the door bell rang. He jumped up in a flutter of paper to answer it and returned with a large brown box that he placed on the almost empty lock table. He swung his hands behind his back and looked at her expectantly.

At any other time she’d have asked him if it was a bomb, but that seemed insensitive at this point. She looked at the box, to Sherlock and back again. “What is it?”

“An anathema against boredom,” he announced and gestured at it. “Open.”

She hung up the lock in her hand and stepped to the table, using a knife to cut the packing tape. She opened the flaps and peered into the packing paper before reaching in. She found something small and cool in the paper and pulled it out to reveal an intricately carved chess piece. A white bishop. She rummaged a moment more before finding a black knight and the white queen, all beautifully carved from what looked like different colors of marble. “Sherlock these are gorgeous. Where did you-”

“I had it. In storage. I used to enjoy playing. Before.” He made one of his vague hand gestures. “I had it dug out and sent here for us to play with. You expressed interest in refreshing your skills the other day. At least you didn’t dismiss the idea outright,” he added when she didn’t answer.

“No. I think it’s a great idea.” She ran her thumb over the lines of the queen before putting it down and digging in the box. “Let’s get it set up.”

They spent the rest of the day in the front room, hunched over the coffee table. It only took her a few rounds to get the hang of it, then the real strategy began. At one point it occurred to Joan she was hungry and they ordered Korean BBQ.

Several hours later she flopped back on the couch. “Nope. I can’t do it. I need to sleep.”

Sherlock leaned back and stretched. “I suppose our last few gambits have been ill thought out.” 

“I’m having trouble remembering how to count, I don’t think I’ve had anything resembling a gambit in a while.”

Sherlock smiled. “Well, that’s the joy of chess. We can leave it here to continue with later.”

“You sure you haven’t trained Clyde to come move pieces in your favor?”

“Not yet. But now you’ve given me ideas.”

She shook her head, stretching a little and standing. “Goodnight, Sherlock.”

“Watson,” he said suddenly and urgently enough to make her pause. “It occurs to me. Give the recent changes in our relationship. That is. There are certain things. I was wondering. I felt it might be appropriate to-”

Oh, he was kind of adorable when he was awkward and fumbling. The urge to let him twist was remarkably strong. “Sherlock, are you saying you want to sleep with me?”

His look of panic was almost as funny as the fumbling. And, really, was all the answer she needed. “That’s what I thought.” She had thought about it, sex with Sherlock, in the days since they’d kissed. They hadn’t done much since then, though her frequency of and comfort in touching him had increased. But, yes, she’d pictured sleeping with him. And the PG-13, romance movie version was fine. Tracing his shoulder tattoo with fingers and lips. Feeling the scrape of his ever present stubble on her skin. Just the thought was enough to want a cold shower. But then she thought about the realities of it. The fluids and embarrassing noises, as he’d put it once, trying to make her uncomfortable. (And, God, that was a lifetime ago, wasn’t it?) And those thoughts made her libido run and hide for a few hours. So, yeah, she kind of sympathized with his panic.

“Neither do I,” she assured him and he managed to look relieved and offended at the same time. “At least not now.”

“I didn’t necessarily mean tonight,” he muttered.

She sat back down. “I just mean. . . A month or two ago, if you’d kissed me the way you did the other day I think I would have totally freaked out. I don’t know when, exactly, I became okay with it, but now I am. You have permission to kiss me whenever you like. Warning or not,” she added, trying to prompt a smile. “So, I think the day is coming when we’re both ready for the next step. But we’re not there yet. We’re both. . . I don’t want to say broken-”

“Even though it’s accurate.”

She sighed and went to him, crouching down and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe.” He looked up at her, eyes wide and a little pleading, though she wasn’t entirely sure what he was hoping for. “But broken isn’t bad. And it’s not permanent.”

He lifted a hand and curled it around her side, supporting her. She realized her hand was on the shoulder he’d been shot in and his was covering her scar. She met his eyes again and there was something different in them, like he’d realized the placement, too. She bent close and kissed him lightly. His fingers flexed on her ribs but he kept the kiss gentle and sweet.

 Joan rested her forehead on his. “Goodnight, Sherlock. Thank you for teaching me to play chess.”

“Thank you for being a willing student.” He squeezed her side again. “Sleep well.”

A few hours later Joan woke to the creak of her door opening. She lifted her head a little. “Mmm?”

“It occurred to me that perhaps the more innocent connotations of ‘sleeping together’ might be open to negotiation,” Sherlock said from the doorway.

She sighed into her pillow. “What’s wrong, did you have a bad dream?” She meant it as teasing, but when he didn’t answer she lifted her head again to squint at him. The room was too shadowed to tell her anything, but something about his posture told her maybe she wasn’t too far off the mark. But if she said anything more he was likely to flee. So she sighed dramatically and pulled the sheets back on the empty side of the bed. “If you snore I will kick you.”

The bed dipped with his weight and he lay next to her, a wall of heat. “Consider the threat mutual.”

She smiled and buried her face back in the pillow. Silence stretched. He was practically shaking the bed with nerves. Another talk of their feelings wouldn’t help. She shifted onto her side, back to him. “Bishop to king 5.”

The tension eased from him. “I’ll chalk that up to a sleep addled brain. That move-”

“Check in three moves.”

Silence. Then he rolled and she felt his hand on her ribs. “Watson. Have you been grifting me?”

“Ye-ye LOVED chess.”

He squeezed her and she felt him brush a kiss on her shoulder where her jersey had slipped down her arm. “Impossible woman,” he muttered, making it sound like an endearment.

“Go to sleep,” she told him around a yawn. “No snoring.”

She drifted to sleep with his big, warm hand on her waist and his even breath rustling her hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading. I'm working on a couple of short stories while waiting for the next case-fic to come to me. The Complicated series is definitely not done yet.


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